The Eclipse Table, on pages 51-58, of the Dresden Codex has long fascinated Maya scholars. Researchers use the mean-value method of 173.3 days to determine nodal passage that is the place where eclipses can occur. These studies rely on Oppolzer's Eclipse Canon and Schram's Moon Phase Tables to verify eclipse occurrences. The newer canons of Jean Meeus and Bao-Lin Liu use decimal accuracy. What would be the effect of modern astronomical data on the previous studies and the Maya Eclipse Table? The study utilizes a general view of eclipses that includes eclipses not visible to the Maya. Lunar eclipses are also included. This inquiry differs from previous studies by calculating the Maya dates of eclipses instead of nodal passage. The eclipse dates are analyzed using the three eclipse seasons, of the 520 days, which is the Double Tzolkin or twice the Sacred Calendar of the Maya. A simulation of the Eclipse Table, using the 59-day calendar, is created to test modern data against the Dresden Table. The length of the Table is the Triple Tritos of 405 lunations. The use of the Tritos instead of the Saros suggests the Table is independent of Western Astronomy. Advanced Astronomy is not needed to produce this Table; a list of eclipses could produce this table. The result of this inquiry will be to create a facsimile of the Eclipse Table, which can be compared to the Eclipse Table to test the structure, function and purpose of the Table.

This thesis presents a method of tracking and correcting for the swaying of a central receiver tower in concentrated solar production plants. The method uses a camera with image processing algorithms to detect movement of the center of the tower. A prototype was constructed utilizing a CMOS camera connected to a microcontroller to control the movements of three surrounding heliostats. The prototype uses blob-tracking algorithms to detect and correct for movements of a colored model target. The model was able to detect movements in the tower with average error of 0.32 degrees, and was able to correctly orient the surrounding heliostats to within 1.2 and 2.6 degrees of accuracy while testing indoors and outdoors, respectively.

This study covers how Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were portrayed during their defamation trial in Virginia 2022 by the British newspaper The Sun. The research questions include both how Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were portrayed during the timeframe as well as how they were perceived as a couple. The research questions also cover if there were any differences in how The Sun were framing them during the time period. The method that was used was a thematic analysis of all the articles that The Sun published in the time period that the trial took place, the 11th of April 2022 to the 1st of June 2022. To better help our understanding of the subject we used framing theory and celebrity studies as the theoretical framework. The framing theory also includes a subcategory which is the theory about the ideal victim. Since both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard accused each other of abuse, it was relevant to include if one of them were portrayed as a victim. In the thematic analysis we created three categories based on the research questions. Different themes were found in the articles and were placed as subcategories to the three main categories. The first category was about how the relationship between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was portrayed. Three themes were found: The relationship as a circus, Difference in fame and The trial. The second category was about how Johnny Depp was portrayed. Three themes were identified: Depp as the perpetrator, Superstar Johnny Depp and Innocent or a bully? The third category depicts how Amber Heard was portrayed. Four themes were identified: Heard accused of lying, Heard as the perpetrator, Heard ridiculed by the public and Heard innocent? The results of the study conclude that both Depp and Heard have been portrayed as perpetrators and victims all though Depp was given more attention in the articles than Heard. Another conclusion is that some of the articles describe the case as Depp suing Heard for lying, in contrast to the articles where the case is described as Depp suing Heard for libel.

This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of the musical, written, and spoken production of Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with respect to the larger African Atlantic intellectual environment, situating the two artists as both shapers of an Atlantic intellectual culture as well as artists who were, in turn, shaped by that culture. Through a reading of their creative work, the dissertation argues that, even given the obvious cultural, temporal, and temperamental differences between Sun Ra and Fela, both artists' orientations toward musical composition and performance share similar preoccupations with the recitation of cultural memory and the dialogic creation of historical narratives which is called Composing the African Atlantic. In the dissertation the concept Composing the African Atlantic is proposed as a means of describing an African diasporic version of musical composition which includes many of the so-called extramusical elements of text and performance - audience participation and dialogue being key - as constitutive elements of composition such that, in their absence, the music is not fully realized. Stated in the active present tense (Composing), identified as culturally rooted (African), and formed within a broad and discursively contested space (Atlantic), Composing the African Atlantic describes the means by which composers such as Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti conceive of performance as an essential part of composition, enabling the musicians and audience to craft the true Text of the music through the activation of communal memory and the dialogic contestation of history. The result, in the case of both artists, is the creation of a singular compositional and performative style which maintains its connection to its core audience through the use of ritualized concert performance, the challenging of historical myths, and the performance of historical narratives which refute the Hegelian contention that Africa is "no historical part of the world." In the process, both artists assert that there is a common African cultural memory which exists throughout the African diaspora as a result, fundamentally, of the Atlantic slave trade, but which is also a living, contemporary, cosmopolitan dialectic of representation and re-presentation.

The Sun is of fundamental importance to life on earth and is studied by scientists from many disciplines. It exhibits phenomena on a wide range of observable scales, timescales and wavelengths and due to technological developments there is a continuing increase in the rate at which solar data is becoming available for study which presents both opportunities and challenges. Two satellites recently launched to observe the sun are STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory), providing simultaneous views of the SUN from two different viewpoints and SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) which aims to study the solar atmosphere on small scales and times and in many wavelengths. The STEREO and SDO missions are providing huge volumes of data at rates of about 15 GB per day (initially it was 30 GB per day) and 1.5 terabytes per day respectively. Accessing these huge data volumes efficiently at both high spatial and high time resolutions is important to support scientific discovery but requires increasingly efficient tools to browse, locate and process specific data sets. This thesis investigates the development of new technologies for processing information contained in multiple and overlapping images of the same scene to produce images of improved quality. This area in general is titled Super Resolution (SR), and offers a technique for reducing artefacts and increasing the spatial resolution. Another challenge is to generate 3D images such as Anaglyphs from uncalibrated pairs of SR images. An automated method to generate SR images is presented here. The SR technique consists of three stages: image registration, interpolation and filtration. Then a method to produce enhanced, near real-time, 3D solar images from uncalibrated pairs of images is introduced. Image registration is an essential enabling step in SR and Anaglyph processing. An accurate point-to-point mapping between views is estimated, with multiple images registered using only information contained within the images themselves. The performances of the proposed methods are evaluated using benchmark evaluation techniques. A software application called the SOLARSTUDIO has been developed to integrate and run all the methods introduced in this thesis. SOLARSTUDIO offers a number of useful image processing tools associated with activities highly focused on solar images including: Active Region (AR) segmentation, anaglyph creation, solar limb extraction, solar events tracking and video creation.

The intention of this work is to represent the nomadic culture by a luminaire. Inspired by the nomadic Mongolian ger(yurt) and based on its physical and cultural characters, the work is done by designing a portable luminaire with the concept of the solar solution. The whole project is an attempt of bringing traditional culture items to luminaire design and searching for the balance between them.

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